¶1. (SBU) Summary. Mexico is a awash with illegal firearms from unknown suppliers that arm organized crime groups and fuel escalating violence. Investigation and prosecution of illegal arms dealers is thwarted by in-fighting among Mexican institutions and legal restrictions that prevent the sharing of important information. Successful prosecution of illegal arms traffickers will depend on U.S. law enforcement agencies gaining access to confiscated weapons to form actionable intelligence and launch investigations. End Summary

A Recipe for Problems: Too Many Cooks, Too Little Love

¶2. (C) Currently, government warehouses throughout Mexico have approximately 140,000 weapons either confiscated from crime scenes or gathered from check points. Some of these weapons -- in storage for over 10 years -- are suspected to have little investigative value. The warehouses are the responsibility of the Mexican Army (SEDENA), which maintains a piece-meal list of information on at least 64,000 weapons collected since the start of the Calderon administration in December 2006. SEDENA's decision to share this information with us in July of this year prompted ICE and ATF to review the data in an effort to open criminal investigations against individuals suspected of knowingly selling weapons to individuals linked to drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). DIA analysts initiated a separate effort to identify the origin of the weapons as well as trafficking patterns. Unfortunately, the information is incomplete and lacks source data, a reflection of the inconsistent and uneven collection methods employed by Mexican Federal Police (SSP), Mexican Attorney General (PGR), and SEDENA officials in their investigation of confiscated weapons. (Septel analyzes efforts to systematically collect and share weapons forensic information.)

¶3. (SBU) PGR assumes legal authority for confiscated weapons stored in warehouses that correspond to Mexican criminal investigations. Once the PGR completes its initial investigation, it turns over the actual weapon and all information it has gathered over to the Mexican judiciary, which retains jurisdiction over the weapon over the course of judicial proceedings. Upon termination of all investigative and judicial proceedings, SEDENA is assigned responsibility for disposition or destruction of the weapons -- a process that could take years.

¶4. (SBU) Besides the sheer magnitude of the weapons collected, the GOM's disjointed approach for managing the weapons it stores in its warehouses has fostered an ad-hoc system with many accountability gaps. On frequent occasions, GOM agencies -- with their conflicting priorities and competing responsibilities -- openly dispute who has the lead on key arms investigations. PGR holds tightly to its authority as the prosecutorial, investigative, and forensic arm of the GOM; while the SSP retains its position as the lead federal law enforcement agency, an investigative role recently expanded in new legislation. Both agencies have the authority to conduct crime scene investigation and collect forensic evidence, yet information sharing across bureaucratic lines is virtually nonexistent. SSP generally agrees to share information on cases only when the case is transferred to the prosecutor (PGR).

¶5. (SBU) U.S. law enforcement agencies have a strong interest in obtaining information from weapon seizures as this information forms the basis of intelligence, follow-on domestic investigations, and potential prosecutions. A February 2009 Mexican Supreme Court ruling, however, restricts any access to weapons that are involved in court cases. The USG has had limited success obtaining access to warehouses and weapons, with the exception of some high-level visits, affording rare opportunities to get a look inside the warehouses. Even though the GOM provided information on 64,000 confiscated arms, the incomplete information needs to be verified and experts need access to the actual weapons to obtain additional evidence -- source data, obliteration data and pictures -- to provide the basis for investigations and subsequent U.S. judicial cases. SEDENA insists it is willing to grant U.S. law enforcement agencies access to confiscated weapons and blames PGR for any denials. In mid-August, SEDENA reviewed with us twelve instances in which its approval of our official requests for access were overturned MEXICO 00003109 002.2 OF 002 by the PGR, based on the February 2009 Supreme Court case.

¶6. (SBU) Comment. Claims by Mexican and U.S. officials that upwards of 90 percent of illegal recovered weapons can be traced back to the U.S. is based on an incomplete survey of confiscated weapons. In point of fact, without wider access to the weapons seized in Mexico, we really have no way of verifying these numbers. (Emphasis supplied, MBV.) Joint efforts to develop intelligence that can serve the impetus for investigations and prosecutions of individuals or companies that market firearms to the cartels, will require Mexican and USG law enforcement agencies to share essential crime scene forensic information on a real time basis. Post law enforcement agencies will continue to work closely with their Mexican counterparts to break down institutional divisions and facilitate more information sharing on arms trafficking cases both among the Mexican agencies and with U.S. partners.

Of course they knew that the 90% figure was such a blatant lie that no one with even half a brain would believe it - that's why their latest figure is 'only' 70% - a much more believable lie. Either way it hasn't slowed down their efforts to denigrate law abiding gun owners and fully compliant gun shops..............

The "iron river of guns" - also known as the "90 percent myth" - is the foundational tenet of both the original Fast and Furious conspiracy and of the current defense/cover-up.

Those truly interested in getting to the bottom of Fast and Furious would be better served by focusing on the total annihilation of this myth vs. ancillary attempts to find White House connections or other proof of widespread conspiracies.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.